Milton S. Eisenhower Library at the Johns Hopkins University

Friends of the Libraries Book Collection Contest

January 2000

[Won second prize, graduate students]

Name: Diana Thorburn

Degree Program: Ph.D. International Relations and International Economics

School: Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies

Title of Collection: Reading Caribbean Women: Theory, ‘Fact’ and Fiction


Reading Caribbean Women: Theory, ‘Fact’ and Fiction

Collection of Diana Thorburn

Why and how the collection was assembled

This collection of books by and about Caribbean women began as the syllabus for an undergraduate class in Caribbean Literature in 1990. I have since continued to collect and read books by some of the writers whose work I studied in that class, and my interest has grown to include many other Caribbean women writers. These works of fiction have stimulated my interest in the social and historical place of women in Caribbean societies, and, as such, the collection has expanded to include sociological, historical and theoretical works. These give a more grounded understanding of the settings of the stories, and of the themes that comprise the fictional works, as well as a more complete understanding of the dynamics of Caribbean societies as a whole.

The fiction in this collection is primarily from the French Caribbean, particularly Guadeloupe and Haiti, and the English-speaking Caribbean, primarily Jamaica, Antigua, and Trinidad and Tobago. The works of poetry are by Jamaican women.

After that original course I continued to read as many more works by the authors I studied in that class as possible. For suggestions, I often consulted a friend’s mother, a professor of Caribbean literature at the University of the West Indies, and the co-author of Her True-True Name, one of the first anthologies of Caribbean women writers. She shared copies of academic journals with me, and recommended writers and books to me. I followed book review columns wherever I could, and would always look for any new books by writers I knew when I went into bookstores. I attended readings and lectures whenever possible. I also visited the University of the West Indies bookstores at the beginning of each semester, to see if there was anything on the reading lists for Caribbean literature classes that I had not yet read.

I began to collect the non-fiction works in 1994, when my interest in gender as a social construct had now taken root, stimulated in great part by the stories that had so intrigued me. I was now a graduate student in international relations, and I audited an undergraduate course, “Sex, Gender and Society”, taught by one of the Caribbean’s leading feminist academics. I bought two of her books, and went in search of others that looked intriguing from peeking on her office bookshelf. While these works do not comprise, by any means, a comprehensive academic or theoretical literature on Caribbean women, they do represent key areas in shaping one’s understanding of the context in which the fiction plays itself out. These books tell the “story” of Caribbean women in history, in politics, as workers and economic agents, and in their family roles. They also offer some theoretical frameworks within which these different aspects of life can be made coherent and understood.

The consonance between the “fact” and the “fiction” is remarkable. The predominant themes of women’s lives as represented by academic research—complex family lives, work and economic hardship, race, class and skin-colour issues, migration, challenging male-female relations, conflicted relationships with other women, legacies of colonialism—are embodied by the fictional characters. Indeed, these fictional characters bring empirical data and historical and sociological research to life. Moreover, at a personal level, I have gained greater understanding of the exogenous forces influencing my own life and of the lives of the women around me, through the stories that at times mirror my own experience, and through the analysis of social and historical phenomena.

It is also fascinating to follow the evolution of the writers themselves. A predominant theme of the literature is migration to North America or Europe (and in some cases Africa), which is also a preponderant feature of Caribbean life, where it has been estimated that, for some countries, there are an equal number of nationals overseas as there are in the territory itself. Another principal theme is the exploration of racial identity, the search for African roots, and the influences of African, European, and East Indian heritage. I have followed Maryse Condé from Guadeloupe, to Africa, back to the 18^th century US, and back to Guadeloupe again. I have witnessed Michelle Cliff’s journey from Jamaica to the US, as I have accompanied Edwidge Danticat and Jamaica Kincaid from their native islands to their ultimate destination of the USA. That migration is such a popular theme perhaps reflects the fact that many of the women writers themselves have migrated to the US, where there is greater scope for writers to earn a living from writing, and from teaching writing and literature.

Now, as a doctoral student in international relations, my leisure time is heavily circumscribed. Nevertheless, I still pursue my love of Caribbean women’s literature and of academic work on gender. I am in touch with friends who keep me informed of “the latest” in the Caribbean writers’ world, and with academics in the field of women’s studies. I have also been lucky to find a bookstore in Washington D.C. that specializes in African American and Caribbean writers, where I recently had the pleasure of attending the reading of the latest addition to my collection there.

Bibliography

(1) Barrow, Christine, ed. Caribbean Portraits: Essays on Gender Ideologies and Identities. Kingston, 1998. The wealth of essays in this volume is testament to the growth of women’s and gender studies in the Caribbean academy. The contributions to this collection comprise the disciplines of public health, the humanities and the social sciences, all addressing issues of gender ideology and identity.

(2) Belgrave, Valerie. Ti Marie. Oxford, 1988. Set at the end of the eighteenth century in Trinidad, Belgrave explores a relatively seldom used genre in Caribbean women’s writing: the historical novel. The love story that is central to the plot serves as a useful context for exploring issues of class and colour, issues that continue to pervade women’s lives and relationships today. This was the novel that sparked my interest in the history that I later explored.

(3) Belgrave, Valerie. Sun Valley Romance. Oxford, 1993. I met Belgrave at a seminar she presented on the role of romantic fiction in women’s lives; many Caribbean women of all socio-economic classes, she said, read romance novels as an escape from their every day lives. She wanted to bring some “local colour” to some of their reading, most of which is imported from England and North America. Belgrave sets her story in Trinidad, and though this is “light” reading, issues of class and colour are central to the plot.

(4) Bennett, Louise. Jamaica Labrish: Jamaican Dialect Poems by Louise Bennett. Kingston, 1966. Louise Bennett is the most popular writer in Jamaican history, male or female. She was instrumental in making the use of Jamaican dialect as a literary medium acceptable. These poems reflect slices of Jamaican life and culture in a humorous manner. Rare for a Caribbean writer, she has gained widespread critical and popular acclaim.

(5) Cezair-Thompson, Margaret. The True History of Paradise. New York, 1999. This is the most recent addition to my collection. Cezair-Thompson is a Jamaican living in Boston; this is her first novel. The setting of her book represents a very volatile and controversial period of recent Jamaican political history—the “great political experiment” of socialism in the 1970s. I was only a child, but I can envision some of the small details she describes, such as the ominous police presence and the fear of violence. Mother-daughter relationships and class and colour dynamics are central to the setting of the story. Like many other Caribbean writers, her next novel will be about a Jamaican woman in the US.

(6) Cliff, Michelle. No Telephone to Heaven. New York, 1983. Clare, Cliff’s protagonist, is a young woman trying to reconcile the class and gender conflicts she is faced with on a return to Jamaica from the US, where her family has emigrated. Clare is in Jamaica in the midst of Jamaica’s great “political experiment” of the seventies, as the country attempted to come to terms with its conflicted legacy of slavery and colonialism

(7) Cliff, Michelle. Abeng. New York, 1984. Here we are introduced to a younger Clare, recently emigrated to the US from Jamaica, who is growing up in a family riven by divisions of race and class, complicated by the different race and class dynamics of the northeast US. An abeng is a horn fashioned from a conch shell that was used by runaway slaves to pass messages to each other; in the 1960s and early 1970s there was a radical black nationalist political group in Jamaica that called itself Abeng. The choice of this name for the book reflects a political context that has been shaped by the experience of slavery.

(8) Cliff, Michelle. The Land of Look Behind. Ithaca, New York, 1985. Through an assortment of poems, vignettes and excerpts from other works, Cliff here continues the theme of the dynamics of the post-colonial experience.

(9) Cliff, Michelle. Free Enterprise. London, 1993. Cliff writes for the first time outside of the time frame of her own immediate experience and journeys into a time past, and into the setting of a North American leper colony, and the American anti-slavery movement. Nevertheless, colour and class issues, and mother-daughter conflict, remain central to the novel.

(10) Cliff, Michelle. The Store of a Million Items: Stories. New York, 1998. Cliff’s most recent work, a collection of short stories, returns to her original settings: a young Jamaican woman caught between race, class and gender dynamics, in Jamaica and the US.

(11) Condé, Maryse. Heremakhonon. Translated by Richard Philcox. Washington, D.C., 1976. This is Condé’s first novel, and also the first novel of hers that I read; it played a significant role in the development of my interest in Caribbean women’s writing. The story is essentially about a Caribbean woman who is searching for her African roots, and the conflicts she encounters along the way.

(12) Condé, Maryse. A Season in Rihata. Translated by Richard Philcox. Oxford, 1981. Condé continues the setting of a Caribbean woman in Africa; this novel could be read almost as a sequel to Heremakhonon. Condé further explores the discomfiting reality of African life for a Caribbean woman.

(13) Condé, Maryse. Segu. Translated by Barbara Bray. New York, 1984. This novel is entirely set in 18th century Africa, and is about an African kingdom and its disintegration upon its encounter with the slave trade; many Africans ended up in the Caribbean because of the slave trade. In a sense, Condé here explores the background to her stories of Caribbean women searching for their roots in Africa, and her later work on African heritage in the Caribbean.

(14) Condé, Maryse. Tree of Life. Translated by Victoria Reiter. London, 1987. Condé’s novel, though set in Martinique, treats the period when many Caribbean men went to Central America to work on the Panama Canal. The story is set in present times, but the central plot is about looking to the past to understand the present.

(15) Condé, Maryse. Crossing the Mangrove. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York, 1989. Condé’s novel is this time entirely located in Guadeloupe, and tells the story of a small community and its interactions. Condé makes clear the legacy of African traditions on contemporary Caribbean life.

(16) Condé, Maryse. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York, 1991. Condé again reaches into history, this time African-American history, telling the legendary story of the Barbadian slave Tituba, who was believed to be a witch; this novel is set in the era of the witch hunt in the Salem witch hunt. Tituba was also a character in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

(17) Condé, Maryse. The Last of the African Kings. Translated by Richard Philcox. Nebraska, 1992. This novel continues the theme of Africa in the Caribbean, along the lines of Segu, telling the story of a noble African family that, through the generations, ends up as the African diaspora in North America and the Caribbean.

(18) Condé, Maryse. Windward Heights. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York, 1995. Condé re-imagines the Brontë novel, Wuthering Heights, and sets the story in the Caribbean (some Caribbean islands are known as the Windward Islands). Condé locates her story in the historical period of the abolition of slavery

(19) Condé, Maryse. Land of Many Colours and Nanna-Ya. Translated by Nicole Ball. Nebraska, 1997. Originally published in 1985, these two novellas are set in the present day Caribbean; the stories here, set in the French and English speaking Caribbean, trace the historical influences of slavery and colonialism on contemporary race and class dynamics. “Nanna-ya” refers to the Jamaican national hero, Nanny, who was a leader of the runaway slaves, the Maroons.

(20) Cudjoe, Selwyn R., ed. Caribbean Women Writers: Essays from the First International Conference. Wellesley, Massachusetts, 1990. This book first sets out a “context” of the historical and sociological dimensions of Caribbean women’s lives, and then, through the contributions of poets, novelists and literary critics, addresses women characters and gender relations as portrayed in various works of Caribbean prose and poetry. The writers included also consider the act of writing as a Caribbean woman in all its various dimensions.

(21) Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. London, 1994. Danticat is one of the new faces among Caribbean women writers. She writes mainly about childhood in Haiti, and life as an immigrant in the US and is one of few Haitian women to publish fiction in English. Her representation of Haiti, while it may humanize the media images, does not necessarily change the impression of darkness and sadness. This novel is a coming of age novel of a young Haitian girl recently emigrated to the US—a common theme in Caribbean women’s writing.

(22) Danticat, Edwidge. The Farming of Bones. New York, 1999. Danticat here writes in the genre of historical fiction, setting her story of a Haitian woman during the 1930s, when the Dominican leader Rafael Trujillo ordered the massacre of Haitians working in the Dominican Republic. While the novel tells a horrifying tale, this book is important because it tells a little-known story.

(23) Edgell, Zee. In Times Like These. Oxford, 1991. Edgell is a Belizean writer who portrays a single mother returning from London to a Belize approaching independence. Belize, though considered a part of the Commonwealth Caribbean, is located in Central America, and because of this, its gender dynamics differ in some respects from other Caribbean countries, making the experience related here an interesting point for comparison.

(24) Ferguson, Moira, ed. The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself. London, 1987. Originally written in 1831, Mary Prince was a slave in the Caribbean who escaped to England in the 1820s. Her story is one of the earliest writings by a Caribbean woman, and is an essential part of the Caribbean women’s literature canon.

(25) Goodison, Lorna. Selected Poems. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1992. Goodison is a Jamaican poet noted for her insightful and poignant writings on life in the Caribbean. Her poems are about many of the major issues in Caribbean women’s lives: migration, class, skin colour, work and family.

(26) Hart, Keith, ed. Women and the Sexual Division of Labour in the Caribbean. Mona, Jamaica, 1996. This book comprises seminal theoretical and empirical work on Caribbean women and gender, with a primary focus on wage-earning activities and education in the lives of Caribbean women.

(27) Hopkinson, Nalo. Brown Girl in the Ring. New York, 1998. The only book in my collection by a Guyanese woman, and the only science fiction novel—perhaps the only science fiction work by a Caribbean woman. Hopkinson’s story is situated in a futuristic Canada, but the protagonist, Ti-Jeanne, clearly recalls the Caribbean folk hero often featured in West Indian literature, and the themes in the book are common to Caribbean literature—single motherhood, problematic family relationships, economic survival and migration.

(28) Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. New York, 1983. A coming of age novel about an Antiguan girl and her antagonistic relationship with her mother, that ends with the departure of Annie for England. Kincaid is well known as a Caribbean writer; this, her first novel, comprises the syllabi for many a course on West Indian literature, from high school to graduate school levels.

(29) Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy. New York, 1990. Set in the US, 19-year old Lucy’s experience as a Caribbean au pair, could be read as what happened to Annie John when she left Antigua. Lucy’s conflicted relationship with her mother back on her island is woven throughout the story.

(30) Kincaid, Jamaica. The Autobiography of My Mother. New York, 1996. This novel goes back to the Caribbean, and is located entirely in Dominica. Though this work deals with her familiar subject of mother-daughter conflict, Kincaid here departs from the style of her earlier work into a more magical realist genre.

(31) Kincaid, Jamaica. My Brother. New York, 1997. Kincaid here follows the tradition she has established for her novels, writing about deeply personal issues involving family and homeland; this time, her brother’s death from AIDS.

(32) Marshall, Paule. The Chosen Place, The Timeless People. New York, 1969. Marshall is a Barbadian writer living in the US who, in this novel, writes from the perspective of a West Indian emigrated to the US, back in the Caribbean and trying to reconnect with her homeland as well as her African heritage. Marshall’s work is considered a foundation of the Caribbean literature canon, as well as that of African-American literature.

(33) McKenzie, Alecia. Satellite City. Kingston, Jamaica, 1992. I chanced upon this book in a bookstore; however I enjoyed the short stories immensely. Some years after I found it I saw it in the university bookstore as a required text for a literature course.

(34) Momsen, Janet H., ed. Women and Change in the Caribbean: A Pan-Caribbean Perspective. Kingston, 1993. One of the seminal collections of academic work on Caribbean women, reflecting the beginning of the growth of women’s studies in the 1990s. This book includes studies of the wider (that is, non-English speaking) Caribbean, providing a broader perspective as well as valuable bases for comparison.

(35) Mootoo, Shani. Cereus Blooms at Night. New York, 1996. Mootoo’s book was recently brought to my attention by a friend who writes an arts and literature column for a Jamaican newspaper, in response to my question, “what’s ‘hot’ these days in Caribbean literature?” This is the only novel in my collection (and the only one that I know of) by a Trinidadian woman of East Indian descent, and can be described as a mystery novel—again, a seldom used genre in Caribbean women’s fiction.

(36) Mordecai, Pamela, and Mervyn Morris, eds. Jamaica Woman: An Anthology of Poems. London, 1980. This is perhaps the first collection of any writings only by Caribbean women, in this case, Jamaican women. Most of the contributors are today well-known poets, though at the time the collection was first published, none had her own volume in print.

(37) Mordecai, Pamela, and Betty Wilson, eds. Her True-True Name. Oxford, 1989. Mordecai and Wilson bring together a host of women writers from the Spanish, French and English speaking Caribbean. This anthology was one of the first in my collection, and introduced me to a number of writers that I would not have otherwise heard of.

(38) Nourbese Philip, Marlene. Harriet’s Daughter. London, 1988. Nourbese Philip’s story of two West Indian girls in Canada, and their moving between two worlds—the West Indian home, and the North American wider environment. This would be an appropriate novel to introduce teenagers to Caribbean women’s literature. Nourbese Philip is originally from Tobago, the “twin island” of Trinidad, and is the only Tobagonian writer in this collection.

(39) Nunez, Elizabeth. Beyond the Limbo Silence. Seattle, 1998. This novel tells the story of a young Trinidadian women attending an American college, and the culture shock she faces. Again the Caribbean woman travels to the US. The story this novel tells very much mirrored my own experience as a Caribbean student in the US.

(40) Palmer Adisa, Opal. Tamarind and Mango Women. Toronto, 1992. I had never heard of Palmer Adisa before I chanced upon this collection in a bookstore I frequent in Kingston. Since then, this book travels with me wherever I go, with tabs marking the pages of my favourites. Her poems are evocative, many of them about the complexities of love and relationships in a Jamaican setting. Palmer Adisa is a Jamaican, living in California.

(41) Rhys, Jean. Voyage in the Dark. London, 1934. Rhys, from Dominica, is considered a cornerstone of the Caribbean women’s literature canon, though for her later work. Here Rhys tells the story of a young white West Indian who has just arrived in England, and who is forced to become a chorus girl to support herself—worlds away from her privileged upbringing in the Caribbean. Rhys’ early novels were primarily centred around such themes.

(42) Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. London, 1966. This is the novel Jean Rhys is most famous for, and is one of the most famous Caribbean novels in general. It is also one of my favourite books. Though the story is about Bertha, the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre, it is based on Rhys’ own experience as a privileged white child in her Caribbean homeland. One of the most important aspects of this novel is the relationship between Rhys, her mother, and her black nanny.

(43) Rhys, Jean. Smile Please. London, 1979. This is Rhys’ unfinished biography, where she reveals her own experience as an emigré from Dominica to Europe that served as much of the context for her novels.

(44) Schwarz-Bart, Simone. Between Two Worlds. Translated by Barbara Bray. London, 1979. Through the genre of magical realism, Schwarz-Bart, a Guadeloupean writer, explores the connection between Africa and the Caribbean with a folk hero, Ti-Jean, as the central character.

(45) Senior, Olive. Summer Lightning and Other Stories. Essex (England), 1986. Senior is a renowned poet and short story writer. This collection of short stories is required reading in many Caribbean schools, and have been featured in many anthologies of Caribbean writing and women’s writing for their vivid evocations of rural Jamaican life.

(46) Senior, Olive. Working Miracles: Women’s Lives in the English-speaking Caribbean. Cave Hill (Barbados), 1991. An excellent resource for students of Caribbean women’s studies, as this very readable book condenses the extensive empirical research done by the Women in the Caribbean Project, the first academic study ever specifically on Caribbean women. The book reads almost as a novel, except that it is based on the real-life experiences of 1,600 women in 14 Caribbean countries.

(47) Senior, Olive. Discerner of Hearts and Other Stories. Toronto, 1995. In the tradition of Summer Lightning, Discerner brings to life, through the short story, different aspects of Jamaica, past and present.

(48) Shepherd, Verene, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey, eds. Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective. Kingston, 1995. The essays here cover a broad range of historical aspects of women’s lives in the historic Caribbean, from slavery and indentureship through independence and revolutionary politics. This is one of the few books specific to Caribbean women in historical perspective.

(49) Spence, Vanessa. The Roads are Down. Oxford, 1993. Spence’s short novel is set in Kingston, Jamaica, and tells the story of a young middle class woman and her interaction with the rural community where she lives. It is an important contribution to the collection because it tells the story of a present-day Jamaican woman from a perspective not often portrayed.

(50) Warner-Vieyra, Myriam. Juletane. Translated by Betty Wilson. Oxford, 1982. Warner-Vieyra’s novel is reminiscent of Maryse Conde’s early works on a Caribbean woman’s life in Africa, and the alienation and isolation that comprise much of that experience.